Jury selection begins in Bethlehem Puerto Rican club shooting trial

Mike Nester, THE MORNING CALL

The scene in December 2012 when one woman was killed and five people were injured during a shootout in Bethlehem outside the South Side's Puerto Rican Beneficial Society.

The scene in December 2012 when one woman was killed and five people were injured during a shootout in Bethlehem outside the South Side's Puerto Rican Beneficial Society. (Mike Nester, THE MORNING CALL)

Two years later, jury selection begins in Bethlehem Puerto Rican social club shooting

Jury selection has begun in the trial of two men accused of a chaotic fatal shooting outside a Puerto Rican social club in Bethlehem two years ago.

By day's end Monday, two jurors were selected to decide the fates of Rene Figueroa and Javier Rivera-Alvarado, who are charged with a score of serious felonies in the early Dec. 2, 2012 shooting near the Puerto Rican Beneficial Society on the South Side.

The process is expected to take a week. Figueroa faces the death penalty, a prospect that requires each potential juror to be questioned at length on their views of capital punishment and their ability to be fair and follow Northampton County Judge Anthony Beltrami's instructions.

A jury pool of 60 has been drawn. Eleven were brought into court individually on Monday, with one man and one woman chosen. Twelve jurors and four alternates are needed before the trial can begin.

Authorities have labeled the shooting one of the Lehigh Valley's worst gunfights, with a minor incident inside the East Third Street club spilling into the street and creating a crime scene so complicated that investigators had to draw diagrams to make sense of what happened.

Figueroa faces a possible death sentence if convicted of gunning down 23-year-old Yolanda Morales of Bethlehem during the melee. Three others were injured, as were the defendants, both of whom suffered gunshot wounds.

The long delayed trial comes as authorities say they foiled a plot by Figueroa and his wife, Sonia Panell, to kill witnesses in his case — developments that have captured headlines as much as the initial shooting.

In August, Panell pleaded guilty in federal court to trying to hire a hitman whom she allegedly promised to provide with a gun, night-vision goggles and an untraceable phone. But Panell is now seeking to withdraw that guilty plea, claiming she was entrapped by an informant who was desperate for money and has lied to the FBI in the past.

In July, Northampton County authorities also charged Figueroa in the murder-for-hire plot, alleging he offered to pay a fellow county prison inmate $50,000 last year if he "agreed to kill some of the witnesses." By telephone, Figueroa and Panell spoke in code while planning the killings, police charged in court records, to avoid alerting Northampton County Prison officials who record inmates' phone conversations.

Panell and Figueroa are also charged with trying to sneak a cellphone into the Easton jail in December.

Those allegations will be heard by the jury during the shooting trial. Last week, Beltrami ruled the prosecution can introduce them as evidence, after First Deputy District Attorney Terence Houck argued that a plot to kill witnesses helps show that Figueroa knows he is guilty.

Rivera-Alvarado, 40, and Figueroa, 34, both of Allentown, have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys have said the defendants are the victims, and not the perpetrators.